


the stars that guide us

by forestpenguin



Series: Finding Home [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Genre: (you know what that means), Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Awkward Crush, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Leia Organa-centric, POV Leia Organa, Pre-Canon, other than that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 21:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12897213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forestpenguin/pseuds/forestpenguin
Summary: Cassian and Leia finding their way in a confusing galaxy.





	the stars that guide us

**Author's Note:**

> Cassian's been de-aged to *whatever age gap you deem appropriate* (I pictured 2-3 years older than Leia) so I could write this without feeling gross.  
> (Apologies to HanLeia shippers.)

**Ten.**

“Hi.”

“Hello, Princess. It’s nice to meet you.”

The girl firmly takes Cassian’s extended hand in hers, shaking it with surprising vigour.

She peers up at him with wide eyes.

“What’s your name?”

“Cassian.”

“What are you doing here?”

A smile threatens to spill from his lips at the seemingly hypocritical question. Despite being tall for his age, in a crowd of gruff, grim adults of a myriad of species Cassian’s fresh face is conspicuous – though he’d mastered the art of melting into the shadows to compensate.

For all his abilities, the young Princess was observant and had picked him out immediately, regardless of her ignorance of the overarching issue: this is a rebel outpost. It’s a flaw he can’t fault her for, because it would be imprudent to place the fate of the fledgling resistance in the hands of a nine-year-old who hadn’t outgrown her questioning tongue and unrestrained chatter.

He could praise her for the ease with which her eyes had skimmed through the crowd and met his – two children lost in a world of adults, burdened by experience and responsibilities heavier than what young shoulders should bear.

A mirror, of sorts.

“I-I lost my home. They decided to take me in. You father – Senator Organa, he helped me.”

The horrors of war and poverty hadn’t spared him for his youth, so here he is. The same couldn’t be said for the Princess, and a part of him wonders why the Senator had brought his daughter along on his visit.

“Oh. Well, I’m glad you’ve already met Papá.”

“He’s a good man.”

“He is. He tells terrible jokes though. So _embarrassing._ ” She rolls her eyes with a light shake of her head, then looks at him curiously, waiting for a response.

A rare smile tugs at Cassian’s cheeks, and his face warms.

“Fathers are usually like that.”

“I know, but he’s a _Senator,_ you’d think-”

_“Leia!”_

Cassian and Leia turn at the source of the voice.

Senator Bail Organa could be considered intimidating by some: drawn to his full height, his blue cape flutters off his shoulders as it plays catch-up with the even pace of his boots, he could be as imposing as any other man of his age and stature. The concern on his face, however, softens his features from a formidable politician into a caring father.

“There you are, cielito. I – oh. I see you’ve met Cassian.”

“I have, Papá.”

“Good. It’ll be good for Leia to have someone to speak to here in something other than Basic. I don’t want her losing her language skills.” Bail adopts a slight smile as he looks pointedly at Cassian. He bows his head in bemused agreement, clasping his hands behind his back to keep himself from fidgeting.

Leia turns to Cassian. “You speak High Alderaanian?”

“No, Festian. But our language is like yours.”

“I’ve never heard of Fest,” Leia frowns.

“Most people haven’t.”

Cassian can’t help but notice Bail’s grip tighten on Leia’s shoulder. “That’s not fair,” she says, eyebrows drawing together, lower lip protruding. “I’ll be sure to look it up later – we have to go now.”

Cassian inclines his head. “Of course. It was nice meeting you, Your Highness – Senator.”

He watches as they walk off, turning away and missing the glance Leia throws over her shoulder.

* * *

Leia absentmindedly runs her thumb along the ridges of her datapad, idly flicking the screen on and off. Cassian’s form lingers in her mind’s eye – the Not Quite Alderaanian accent and the steady brown eyes - like a question whose answer would only unleash a thousand more possibilities.

The screen flickers to life again, and Leia’s eyes dart to the image. A snowy white ball hovers over her screen – a pixellated rendering of the icy Outer Rim planet known as Fest.

Cassian’s homeworld. A former Separatist planet now under Imperial control, covered with thick layers of snow and ice year-round.

That’s all she can find.

Leia bites the inside of her cheek.

_Click. Click. Click._

Fest disappears as Alderaan’s snowcapped mountain ranges fill her viewport. She is home.

* * *

**Seven.**

“Do you have a gift for me?”

Cassian looks up from his plate, a rare instance where Leia’s caught him off guard. She nods, raising a hand to cover her smile.

He recovers quickly, carefully scraping the remaining crumbs of cake across his plate with the side of his fork, leaving behind streaks of bright blue icing.

“Not to doubt you, Your Highness, but… are you serious?”

Leia’s too short for the chair so her feet dangle carelessly off the edge. She swings them without care nor concern – none of her tutors are around to chide her, having been dismissed for her birthday festivities. Cassian isn’t someone she needs to impress with her manners.

She glances at the half-melted candles – one for her first decade and two for each year since.

“You’ve gotten so many gifts today – things I couldn’t even dream of getting you. I saw the birds that Senator got you sitting on a branch in the gardens. You’ve released them from their cage already?”

“They looked sad, it seemed unfair.”

“Even though they’re rare?”

“I looked them up. Aldera’s climate is perfectly suited to their natural habitat. They’ll be fine.” 

An attendant silently walks by to pick up their plates and replaces them with steaming mugs. Cassian nods with a soft thank you, and Leia grins.  

“You’re changing the topic! Where’s my present?”

 “I am but a commoner, Princesa. What gift can I give you?”

“If I ask you for something you _can_ give, will you?”

She watches him intently over the rim of her mug, filled to the brim with spiced blue milk.

“Of course.”

“I want a friend.”

He straightens in his seat. “A pet? You didn’t like the birds that Senator got you? Do you want a tooka cat- I’m sure I can find someone who-”

“No. A friend. _You_.”

She bites the inside of her cheek.

The declaration had sounded better in her head, and she’d thought Cassian would understand immediately.

_Oh, right. The other Imperial rich kids you spend time with are driving you out of your mind, and you need someone your age you can freely talk to._

_Someone who_ understands _and isn’t decades older than you._

Cassian sets the mug on the table and Leia’s brought into the terrifying present, wondering whether she’d stepped into depths where he could not follow.

Will he scold her in that gentle way of his?

Instead, Cassian nods.

“Alright, Princesa.”

Leia wants to sigh with relief, but she chooses to pout and cross her arms. Glancing furtively around the room to reaffirm the source of faint chatter as the kitchens, she leans towards Cassian with a conspiratorial whisper:

“You know, when nobody else is around, you can call me Leia. We’re friends, right?”

“As you wish, Leia.”

She grins, smile widening when Cassian gently smiles back.

* * *

**Four.**

“What are they rioting about on Fest?”

The question, Leia thinks, is rather innocuous. Prompted by the relentless line of script scrolling across the bottom of the battered holoscreen where the (official, Imperial-regulated) HoloNews had been relegated to, she thinks there is nobody better to answer the question.

Her meetings with Cassian are few and far between, months stretching by before she can squeeze in a word or two in conversation with him. Her father has stopped showing interest in bringing her along to his meetings – which she is mostly thankful for – and Cassian has stopped visiting the palace.

Not that he’d ever been a frequent visitor.

This rare shared moment is a treasure, then, and Leia decides to make the most of it.

His expression remains neutral. He doesn’t seem as willing to offer his insight as he usually is. Not that Cassian was ever a chatterbox - that was Leia’s occupation. His presence, usually soothing in a way Leia couldn’t describe, prickles with unease. It feels closed off.

Cassian’s hands are curled tightly around his glass, and if Leia had been paying closer attention she would’ve noticed his knuckles turning white.

“Unfair working conditions,” Cassian says. “Excruciatingly long days, the constant threat of poisoning. Not to mention the pollution.”

“That’s terrible!”

He nods, not raising his eyes.

“Every voice that’s spoken out about this has been silenced. And the Empire’s getting more brutal in the effort to keep… the population under control.”

“Well they have a _right_ to be angry, I would be too – I am!” Leia exclaims, miffed. “What are they even making?”

Cassian shakes his head, avoiding eye contact.

“Well. It doesn’t matter, nothing’s valuable enough to risk the lives of Imperial citizens for,” she muses. “We should do something!”

“Yeah,” he scoffs, and he finally meets her eyes before his gaze flickers back to his glass. “ _Silencing_ them is what we’re doing, apparently.”

“No, I mean, Papá always brings up these kinds of things in the Senate, we can try-”

“Your father means all the best in the galaxy, Leia, but he can’t fight for everything by himself. And he has a planet and a family to protect.”

“But-” Leia leans forward. “Surely there’s something we can do?”

Cassian’s shoulders hunch forward as she tries to make sense of the look on his face.

“Maybe it’s your turn,” he murmurs. Louder, he adds: "not like this – not _for_ this. It’s too risky.”

“What do you mean?”

Brown meets brown, and a shared determination sparks between them.

“You’ll recognize the chance when the time comes.”

* * *

**Three.**

Chances, Leia realizes, don’t always come in bright and flashy packaging. Sometimes it comes with the pungent flavour of salt and the stubborn stains of red mineral dust. She’s alone in the dully cold room, left to try and process the day’s events.

_There is an organized resistance against the Empire._

_And my father is leading it._

Pride and anger fight over control of her senses. By the time the door creaks open Leia feels like she’s the sole victim of the battle. She steadies herself, assuming her carefully crafted mask of royalty, and looks up.

The mask crumbles.

“Cassian? You’re-”

_But of course._

She recalls their first meeting as he silently slips into the room, and recognizes it for what it is.

_Your father helped me._

Cassian settles into the seat beside hers, leaving the one across from them empty. She wonders if it’s a sign of support. Leia puffs out a slow breath between pursed lips. A strand of hair flew loose from her hastily braided hair, and she tucks it behind her ear.

Cassian remains silent.

“This is a lot,” she says to thin air.

“I can imagine. I was six when I found out, you know, but back then nothing ever made sense.”

A part of her brain registers that Cassian’s voice sounds gravelly, but Leia pointedly continues to stare at the wall.

“Found out what?” she asks.

“Found out my parents were resistance fighters.”

“Oh.” The curve of her mouth punctuates the observation. Leia tears her eyes away from the small silver of green light let through by the partially open door to look at Cassian’s face.

He’d grown. She shouldn’t have been surprised, since most of the exclamations after she’d arrived on the base consisted of the same revelations about her.

His face seems to _fit_ the rest of him, now. It matches. The curves of his mouth and the lines of his jaw, the browns of his eyes and the loose strands of hair on his forehead.

Everything _fits._

Leia blinks, her hand halfway to her face.

_Oh no._

“You have a bruise on your jaw,” is what she says next, then cringes at her lack of tact.

Cassian is unsurprised, naturally. “It happens. Intelligence work isn’t rewarding.”

Intelligence.

“You’re a _spy?_ And you never _told_ me?”

“Not telling things is part of my job description, Leia.” Cassian deadpans. It could be an attempt at a joke, but with such serious delivery it had to just be his method of telling the truth.

Leia wonders if he’d ever cracked an honest joke. Perhaps he tells the kinds of ones her father does at events, something empty and meaningless just to keep the Imps smiling. She now understands the venom layered in the spaces between her father’s words, and wonders if he’d passed on the art to the Rebels. To Cassian.

She shudders. The art of subterfuge.

 _I could never do that,_ she thinks. Then she realizes she’d been doing the same thing all along.

Spies and saboteurs. Senators and princesses.

Rebels.

“Well this stinks like a bantha’s butt,” she mutters.

“You probably despise me right now.”

“I don’t.”

He cocks an eyebrow.

“I despise _all_ of you.”

 Cassian leans against his chair and stretches.

“Though it’d be a lie if I said I didn’t want to sock you in the face to even out that bruise,” she adds, frowning.

He tilts his head at her, mouth slowly listing into that warm half-smile of his, and Leia can’t help but give in to the feeling tugging at her lips.

“Really?”

“Well. I won’t if you tell me where I can sign up.”

* * *

She shuffles out from the bedsheets, feet swinging down to bitterly cold floors. The bunk squeaks as she rises – perhaps it was the Rebels' best quarters, but Leia wouldn’t blame them for relegating her to a storage compartment on such short notice. The day left her exhausted, and if it wasn’t for the glowing light seeping through the crack under her door, she’d be fast asleep.

She isn’t though, and decides to pursue to source of ebbing light.

The door slides open without protest. As she pads her way down the corridor she realizes the dim inset safety lights of the ceilings aren’t glowing in the same way the air does. The base is eerily quiet, save for the odd sound of footsteps as cargo is unloaded and ships are repaired, dotted with the light under the doors of those typing away at reports.

Leia is alone.

She winds her way through the base, stopping at the entrance to a tunnel. The walls glow in the iridescent light, floors shimmering softy as she steps into the neglected corridor. Pressing one hand to the salty cavern wall, the air against her skin cools until she finds herself standing outside.

She gasps.

The night sky on Crait glitters brilliantly as the entire galaxy, it seems, unfurls in its full splendour before her. No star-maps do it justice. She steps forward, not heeding the crunch of the salt under her feet, and looks around her in awe.

Crait is almost brighter at night than in the daytime.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it? You’re going to freeze out here, though.”

She swivels on her feet, braid swinging as she becomes face to face with Cassian.

“When did _you_ get here?”

“I heard you leave your room. Remind me later to show you how to walk less like a Princess and more like a spy.”

She frowns, crossing her arms. “You _followed_ me?”

“I didn’t want you to get lost.”

He moves out of the seclusion of the tunnel, and the gentle light of the stars caresses his face, illuminating his features.

“You can’t trust me to find my way around base?”

“Better safe than sorry. There’s a spot inside the base where you can see the sky just as clearly. You’re going to get cold out here.”

“You sound like Mamá.”

“It’d be a shame if you got sick on your first proper Base visit, they wouldn’t think you’re suited for espionage.”

His lips curl into a smile when she groans.

She follows him back down the tunnel. They wind up in the hangar she’d passed by earlier, and only now does she notice the secluded side corridor tucked neatly behind a stack of crates. It opens to a viewport of sorts, presumably somewhere one could watch incoming ships. At night, however, it lets in the same colourful lights she’d seen peeking under her doorway.

“Do you like it?” Cassian asks, watching as Leia perches on the nearest crate.

“It’s perfect.” She pats the seat next to her. “Thank you,” she adds as an afterthought.

Neither of them speak for a long time, lost in thought, long enough that Leia thinks Cassian has dozed off. When she glances over, though, he’s wide awake

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“I’m not tired,” he says, and she wonders if he means something else. “Also, you’re awake.”

“And it’s your responsibility to keep me out of trouble?” Leia sets her jaw.

“None of that. You’re perfectly capable on your own, I just… wanted to make sure you felt welcome.”

“Oh.”

“Why aren’t _you_ sleeping?”

“The lights. I saw them through my room and – I don’t know, I felt a _pull_ to them. Like they were calling me. So I had to find the source.” Now that she’s said it, her whole thought process seems impulsive and careless. Leia frowns. “That doesn’t sound like a good reason, does it?”

Cassian half-chuckles, a sardonic huff of air thorugh his nnose. “Better than nightmares.”

Leia doesn’t know what to make of that statement. Her legs swing idly from the top of the crate, heels gently buffeting the sides of it.

Cloud cover drifts over them, and their seats are cast in darkness.

“You know, on Alderaan, they used to say the stars are the spirits of the departed. That they’re there to guide us,” Leia muses. “Well, now that we can _reach_ those stars, they’re just balls of flaming gas. But we still use them for navigation, so… maybe they were right.”

“We said the same thing about the winds on Fest.” Cassian says, and his voice is the softest she’s ever heard it. “We said that when people died, their souls joined the immortal northern winds that blow across the planet. It helps, I think.”

“I’d like to think my birth mother is the brightest one,” she whispers.

“Me too.”

Leia looks at him through the corner of her eye, but his eyes are turned to the sky.

“Do you think….?”

Leia can’t formulate the question and grasps at lingering fragments of thoughts.

The clouds move, and a hazy beam of light falls to the ground, catching in Cassian’s eyes and draping itself over Leia’s boots, setting the red stains aflame with starlight.

 “I… I hope they’re proud of us, you know? For all that we’re doing?” she asks.

He turns to look at her. “For sure. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Neither do you.”

Cassian opens his mouth to say something, then chooses to remain silent. Leia smiles to herself.

The slit of light widens, spilling across the floor and casting the two of them in brilliant colours.

* * *

Leia’s involvement in the newly christened Rebel Alliance brings about many changes.

For one, another title is added to her list of burdens. The words _Princess, heir, future Senator_ carried their own weight, and now the undercurrent of _rebel spy_ increases her responsibilities tenfold. More deception, more care, more lessons to be learned and more repercussions for her mistakes.

She’s tired in a foggy sort of way. Determination shines through like her system’s sun on a cloudy day, but if she closes her eyes Leia can slip right into unconsciousness. The few hours she used to be able to scrape for herself are now devoted to the cause.

She’s tired, but it’s worth it.

The alternative to fighting is doing nothing, and that is something she cannot do.

There’s an small benefit to the rebel cause - one she would never admit to considering out of fear for being seen as the frivolous teenage princess she isn’t  - working with the Rebellion means working with Cassian.

Not always, not directly. They both have thousands of other responsibilities to attend to, but every so often the Force wills their paths to cross; a brief intersection for a fleeting moment in the ceaseless ticking of the galaxy. Cassian brushes past her like a cool breeze, barely a shadow registering on Imperial viewfinders, information slipped into his hands with a lifetime of care and a practiced indifference.

A renewed sense of familiarity develops, something born of shared difficulties – though Leia would be the first to point out that her duties are the desk job to Cassian’s front line struggles. That he returns bruised and battered with someone else’s blood on his hands, while not a single strand of her hair falls out of place and her clothes remain unwrinkled and free of stains.

But they both have been playing this game – no, have been pieces in this game – for as long as they can remember.

There’s a familiarity there, something born from the heart of the same star.

In that familiarity something new and foreign blossoms.

Cassian brushes past her, and something electric burns her skin. She longs to reach out and intertwine her fingers with his, to tell him to _stay_ and that he doesn’t have to fight like _this_ anymore, that he can stay with her and they’ll help the Rebellion from the outside, no more bruises, no more pain, no more nightmares –

But she knows better.

Someone's hands must be dirtied, to keep her robes unsoiled.

“May the Force be with you, Cass,” she murmurs to his back. He pauses, nods, then disappears back into the shadows.

Leia doesn’t have a name for the feeling that pushes her in the direction of his footsteps, and hopes she never needs to give it one.

* * *

**Two.**

“What did you tell them?

“Who?”

“The soldier, earlier, the one who looked scared for their first mission.”

“I didn’t know you saw that.”

She hadn’t meant to. But her eyes are pulled to him regardless, tracking his movements despite her intentions, catching brief glimpses of a shadow in a worn-out vest between the pages of her reports. Somewhere in her past Leia’s heart stopped picking up its pace at every shared glance, and instead levels off into an even, thrumming along like the birds soaring past the windows of the palace at home.

 _This_ is dangerous, she realizes. Flushed cheeks and darting eyes are something she can hold in check. But the calm she feels in the chaos – the way she knows his eyes are on her as another high-ranking official scoffs at her suggestions during a meeting, the way she can read his expression and can _hear_ him telling her to save the anger for later, feel his sympathy at the disgust clawing up her chest –

He tethers her, and she doesn’t have the heart to cut the connection.

“Nothing much, really.”

She gives him a disbelieving look from under her eyelashes.

“Whatever you said was the complete _opposite_ of _nothing_. I saw the aftermath.”

She remembers the jittery solider in the ill-fitting flightsuit, face in their hands. Leia had noticed them as soon as she’d arrived – their trembling shoulders a clear sign of a being headed into their first battle.

She’d wanted to say something, but what could a Princess in the finest of robes tells someone about to lay down their life in the name of hope?

It’s enough to draw her attention away from the Captain delivering her reports.

The third time Leia glances up, Cassian is at the rebel’s shoulder, hand pressed gently to their shoulder. He pulls up a seat beside them, leaning forward and gently rubbing the tension out of their posture, murmuring what she can only guess are words of encouragement. She hears none of it, but by judging by their expression it’s as if Cassian had imparted upon them the secrets of the universe.

The rebel nods, lower lip quivering but posture now straightened, ready.

She’d been pulled back into her duties and by the time Leia could spare a second look, the rebel’s face was split by a wide smile as they turned to watch Cassian leave.

It’s such a radical change that Leia steps in front of Cassian a couple hours later, cornering him in an empty corridor, interrupting his train of thought with the pointed question.

“Cass,” she tries again, and he tenses. But the halls are free of the echo of footsteps, and not a soul lurks in the corners of the hallway. She’d chosen the location for its seclusion.

“I really want to be able to _help_ , you know.”

“I know, Lei, it’s just-”

“What? That I’ve never seen warfare except in HoloNet dramas and Imperial recruitment vids? That my only experiences with deaths are meaningless numbers and boring documents? I realize that. That’s why I’m asking you – I thought you _understood._ ” She sounds angrier than she really is, more upset than she thought she was.

_Why?_

Cassian resigns himself to leaning against the wall of the hallway. Leia follows, hands firmly perched on her hips, taking up more space than she needs to.

“Cass-”

He looks away.

“I lie, Lei. I lie to them. I tell them everything’s going to be okay. I tell them the good guys win in the end. That we have hope, and without hope we have nothing.” He glances at his hands. “When I recruit them, I-I appeal to their sense of justice. I tell them to look up, to look around and _see -_  don’t you want to do something about this? Fix it? Make the galaxy a better place for the next generation?”

Leia watches, enraptured, having uncovered more than she’d bargained for.

“I’m not the Empire – I don’t lie to them about the glory of war, the power of fighting. I always look for people I _know_ understand the risks but have the heart to stand up anyways – people who've seen firsthand what the cost of freedom is. But… I’m still the one pushing them them into the front lines. I open their eyes, but the price is their lives.”

He looks at her now, irises darker from the dim grey lighting of the corridor. His face is set in stone, but the lines of his shoulders are braced for impact.

Leia doesn’t attack.

“That isn’t _lying_.”

The mask slips to reveal confusion.

“You said you lied. Making things easier for them isn’t lying, Cass. They _know_ what they’ve gotten into. They know what the price is, but they also know that it’s worth it. They’re no different from me or you, you aren’t _tricking_ them. You’re giving them something to believe in, giving them… hope. Isn’t that what we’re fighting for?”

She’s moved closer to him while speaking without realizing it. Only when does she finish does she realize she’s almost pushed up against him.

“If willing recruitment is a crime, how about all the people _I’ve_ helped?”

If she looks closer, Leia thinks, she could see right through him.

“You’re wiser than your years, _Princesa_.”

Leia smacks the side of his arm. “I thought you knew that. Shame I didn’t record you, I’d like to have saved that for proof.”

She doesn’t let go of his arm, instead, she lets her hand linger there for longer than necessary. Neither of them look away.

Cassian’s lips curl upwards.

Something stirs inside her, like a cool breeze coaxing waves out of a lake.

Cassian turns suddenly, and she drops her hand at the sudden motion. The sound of mechanized footsteps echoes thorugh the hallway, soon followed by a familiar glint of gold.

“Ah, Princess Leia, _there_ you are,” Threepio remarks, ever-bright and almost offensively polite. “I was-oh! Lieutenant Andor. How nice to see you.”

“And you, Threepio,” Cassian replies, and Leia smiles.

* * *

**One.**

Leia groans and flops into her chair, with the amount of exaggerated technique expected from a HoloNet drama artist.

“Still stressing about that meeting, Your Highness?” Her captain is all smiles and politeness, and though he’d guided her way through countless missions, today his reassurance only grates annoyingly at her. “No worries, Princess, I fully believe in your capabilities and am sure you’ll be able to handle it.”

He grins, fingers lightly drumming over the curve of the helmet clutched in his grip.

“Thank you,” she says politely, forcing her lips into a thankful smile, dropping her hands, “for the reassurance.”

“Anything I can do to help you, Your Highness. You do so much for us. I’ll be back in twenty minutes while the ship refuels.”

He strides off, disappearing into the hangar, the click of his boots and his words hanging in the cold air. Leia digs her teeth into her bottom lip and tries not to scream.

She’s sitting at the table in the main room of the ship, fuming with her head in her hands, when she hears the muffled sound of boots on the entrance ramp.

Leia lifts her head, surprised at the sudden return of her captain, but is instead greeted with the sight of a grim-faced Cassian. She doesn’t fail to notice how the Imperial uniform fits him like a glove, hugging his frame. With his face set like this, he blends perfectly with any other lineup of Imperial officers.

Except the hair. Always, the hair. It curls under the cap – the one he’s now taken off – and spills over the collar.

“How-”

“I heard you arrive and I could spare some time,” he explains with a nonchalant shrug. “Especially when we never know when we’ll see each other again.”

She looks up at him.

“How are you feeling, Lei?”

“Terrified.”

“And you’ve tried-”

“Everything. I keep thinking to myself, be the princess, be the future senator, kriff, even just be the Organas' daughter. But everything keeps slipping away until I’m just a terrified teenager. How do you manage?”

“I remember what I’m doing it for.”

Instead of smiling, she huffs. “ _This_ is what I hate about you. You’re too – you’re too _good!_ ”

He approaches her, frowning, and Leia stands, bumping the table as she rises in a hurry, the sound of the chair’s feet scraping across the floor grating in her ears.

“You’re too nice! You- you never get angry, you’re always _calm_ and _collected,_ and you’re never confused! You-” The rest of the exclamation is muffled by a loud groan. “You’d make a great politician. Or a prince,” she adds. “I can’t. I can’t do this, I can’t do this whole _smile and wave,_ faking thing like you can. Imperials stink and I can’t help but scrunch my nose up, I don’t know _how_ you manage to pretend to be one for months on end.”

Her eyes drop to the colours pinned on his chest.

She’s leaning against the wall now, watching Cassian’s movement towards her. Her stomach turns with his proximity. He doesn’t say anything, just waits for more.

“And this,” she says through her teeth. “You. I don’t – I _shouldn’t_ … I shouldn’t _like_ you, not like this, whatever this is, but I can’t help it. Especially not when every other remotely interesting person out there turns out to be the galaxy's biggest idiot, and half the people interested in me are nerfherders with no capacity to think beyond whatever they’re told by the HoloNet.” She looks to the loading ramp.

“I don’t even _know_ what this is, and you just stand here and take it all in without flinching,” she adds quietly. “Are you even human, Cass?”

He finally responds.

“Sometimes I ask myself the same thing.” His words ring hollowly in her ears, and heat rises in her face.

“I didn’t mean-”

“You didn’t, but it’s the truth. Sometimes I wonder, why don’t I lash out? But I am. I _am,_ Lei. I get angry seeing the world around me, I get angry every time I see one of _these_ uniforms, but-but I guess I channel it into my will to keep going. If I let my ghosts get to me – and some nights they’ve been dangerously close - it means I’ve failed the Rebellion. Failed the galaxy.”

“I wish I could be so considerate.”

“You are, that’s why you’re here, Lei.”

“I,” she falters. “No. I’m just lost.”

“It’s okay, it’s normal.”

“I’m not normal!” she exclaims, stepping closer. “I’m a _Princess._ I’m a _figurehead._ I don’t have the ability to slink away into the darkness. I _have_ to be better, not, not losing my mind over a speech, or a meeting with some Imperial laserbrains. I should have my emotions under control, you know? Like you do.”

She glances at Cassian. The lines of his mouth deepen.

“You’re a Princess, but you’re also human, Lei. You’ve got more weight on your shoulders than any being in the universe – and not enough years to help you hold it up. The fact is, just because I don’t break around _you,_ doesn’t mean I don’t break.”

The emptiness of his voice at the end of the statement jolts her.

Reality falls back into place, and her world realigns.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“We all believe in you, Lei.”

He lowers his voice and the gap of space between them shrinks to a sliver of air buzzing with energy. She gets a whiff of Imperial regulation cologne. For once, she doesn’t recoil.

“I know,” she murmurs, the image of her parents stinging the back of her eyelids. “So failing them…”

“You won’t. I know.”

She leans in, then, wrapping her arms around his torso, cheek brushing against the clasps of his jacket. Cassian’s eyes dart towards the ramp, then gently touches her shoulders.

“For sure?” The sheer magnitude of her youth weighs down on her, and she presses her face into his chest.

“The fact you’re worried about it proves it. For sure.”

She pulls away to look up at him and he smiles down at her, hands loosely encircling her waist.  

“You can’t stay much longer.”

“I have the time, and I don’t know when I’ll see you next.” Hope strangles the _if_ out of his throat, and he chokes out a _when_ instead.

“How aren’t you tired of me?” She grins, jabbing a finger at his chest.

“I _like_ you Lei. You’re a good person. A little rowdy, maybe,” she pouts mockingly, “but…. you mean all the galaxy to me.”

Leia can feel her heart freeze in place, and a lifetime passes before she can breathe again. Cassian looks at her earnestly, dark lashes framing his questioning gaze.

_I don’t know if I’ll see you._

Her hands lace together behind his neck and she gently presses her lips to his. Cassian leans into her, a brief whisper of a promise ghosting across her lips as they brush together. It’s a chaste, fleeting moment where their breaths mingle and Leia's worries dissolve at his soft touch.

Cassian moves away slowly, only going far enough to gently cup her face in his hands. She stares at him, dimly wondering if this is all a dream.

The buzzing of Cassian’s comlink in his pocket anchors her back into the present, and she tucks her chin into the crook of his neck. Cassian answers, one hand resting against her back, and she hopes.

When Cassian’s eyes lock with her again, rimmed with an age-old sadness, she knows it’s over.

“I have to go,” he says.

Leia swallows, hard, and feels something caught in her throat.

 _Say it_.

“I-"

“Don’t,” he murmurs. “Don’t say it. Don't give it life.”

She stares at him incredulously. “What do you _mean-“_

“I don’t think I have it in me to leave if you…”

She pulls him back to her, this time by the collar of his uniform.

“If you won’t let me tell you, let me show you.”

A moment passes before he ducks his head. Leia rises to meet him halfway. Her fingers thread through his hair this time, and she loses all sense of self when he pulls her closer, when her back touches the wall. Threaded with a sense of urgency, it's nothing as gentle as the first. A cumulation, a taste, of what could have been. Still, they hold back from the feeling building between them, restrained by duty.

When her lungs demand they pull apart, she leans back with a gasp, toes aching from the effort.

“I’m-”

She moves to disentangle herself from him.

“I don’t regret that,” Cassian manages to say into her hair, cheeks red, lips even redder. “I hope you don’t.” He lets her go quickly, this time, and snatches his cap off the table to avoid eye contact.

“I don’t. Um, thanks. For the, uh, encouragement.” She grins with a hint of bashfulness, but Cassian merely nods. He's suddenly returned to being the Imperial officer that strode into her ship a few minutes - had it only been _minutes? -_ earlier.

Then his eyes soften.

“Make the stars proud, Lei. Good luck. You’ll do great things as a Senator.”

Leia watches him leave.

* * *

**Zero.**

When the plans to the Death Star are first handed to her, Leia only feels a twinge of pride and excitement. She marvels at how such a vital piece of information, something so powerful it could change the galaxy – for better or worse – could look so… insignificant.

She knows looks mean nothing. She’d witnessed the significance of the smallest, youngest of pieces in this game. When Antilles asks her, she answers truthfully. Despite his skeptical expression, she knows a part of him understands.

The Battle of Scarif will be worth their losses. As long as she can make it to Tatooine.

 _Let the stars guide us,_ she thinks, as they blur into the streaks of hyperspace.

Then Vader takes her. She locks away all the hope she has left in her mind.

He pokes and prods. All she can think of is Mamá and Papá and Mamá and Papá and the view out of her bedroom at home and the mountains framing the horizon and the song of the birds perched on the trees outside.

She slinks away from his probing touch, deeper and deeper into the sanctuaries of her memories.

Crait’s nighttime sky glitters behind her eyelids.

_Let the stars guide me, let the stars guide me._

Leia walks among the stars, reflected in the salt flats below her. It’s as if she’s walking in the sky. She walks, further and further away from Vader’s grip.

 _Cielito,_ her Papá says.

She does not betray the Rebellion.

Alderaan becomes stardust. She still hopes.

When she makes it back to base, her mind is occupied by things other than the fleeting glances of sadness sent her way.

 _I will have time to mourn properly,_ she thinks. For now, she moves in a numb haze.

The only person she knows would understand (hadn’t he lost his home? his people?), the only person she wants to talk to (because he always knew, felt, _understood_ ), the only person she _needs_ to talk to–

He'd been on Scarif.

It would be the feather that broke the tauntaun’s back, had it not been for the sheer energy buzzing throughout the Base as the Death Star looms closer and closer.

 _Please, let us win. Please, let their lives not be wasted_. Every blip indicating an X Wing fades on the dark screen, like stars winking out of existence.

She looks up out of habit, at a spot in the War Room that’s now empty.

A gaping hole widens in her chest.

The Force is a background player in her life - something her parents told her to trust in, when things turned scary and the monsters under her bed felt a little too real. A flickering promise that everything will be right again.

Without that small candle, the darkness would consume them all forever.

She closes her eyes and hopes, pleads – prays – for the Force to bend to their will.

This is for Alderaan, for Scarif, for Jedha. For Papá and Mamá and the attendant girl who helped her pick out a hairstyle before she left Alderaan. For Cassian and the Erso girl and all the lives gone with them. For the mother she never knew and the memories she’d never had.

She hears – doesn’t see – Luke enter the trench one last time.

When she opens her eyes, Solo’s voice rings in the war room and the blip that is Luke Skywalker cheers over the comms as he speeds away from the Death Star.

Leia runs to see the fragments of the Death Star spill across the sky, glittering like the stars she’d once seen on Crait.

* * *

Luke's swept away from her arms by the cheering crowd. Han's already begun to crow about his part in the victory, but she knows his smile is genuine. Leia carefully eases her way out of the celebrations, and forays into the jungle. 

It’s cold, away from the fire. Only the chirping of bugs and the whispers of the trees keep her company.

She looks up at the night sky, where the remains of the Death Star float among the stars. There’s a bright one shining where the superweapon used to be, and just past it, even now, is Alderaan.

 _Thank you,_ she whispers.

_I’ll make you proud._

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's my post that started this all.](https://cassianandorjyn.tumblr.com/post/157675639386/i-for-one-believe-in-the-headcanon-that-leia) This is my first fic for these two, I hope you enjoyed it!  
>  The Crait scene is inspired by [Ai's post here. ](https://forestpenguin.tumblr.com/post/167842129825/dasakuryo-dasakuryo-itd-probably-be-debunked)


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